Muscle · Neck

Superior pharyngeal constrictor

Musculus constrictor pharyngis superior

The highest and thinnest of the three throat constrictors, a roughly four-sided sheet arising from a line of attachments that runs from the base of the skull down through a fibrous band to the inner surface of the jaw and the side of the tongue. Its top edge does not reach the skull all the way round: it falls short, leaving a gap between the muscle and the skull base through which the auditory tube and the muscle that lifts the soft palate pass into the pharynx — a real anatomical doorway rather than a textbook simplification. Its fibres run backwards to a midline seam, and its contraction narrows the upper throat as a swallow passes. Like its two partners it squeezes a tube, so no joint action applies.